The Bloomington School has become one of the most dynamic, well recognized and productive centers of the New Institutional Theory movement. Its ascendancy is considered to be the result of a unique and extremely successful combination of interdisciplinary theoretical approaches and hard-nosed empiricism. This book demonstrates that the well-known interdisciplinary and empirical agenda of Bloomington research program is the result of a less-known but very bold proposition: an attempt to revitalize and extend into the new millennium a traditional mode of analysis illustrated by authors like Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, Hamilton, Madison and Tocqueville. As such, the School tries to synthesize the traditional perspectives with the contemporary developments in social sciences and, thus, to re-ignite the old approach in the new intellectual and political context of the 20th century.

The book presents an outline and a systematic analysis of the vision behind the Bloomington Research Program in Institutional Analysis and Development, explaining its basic assumptions, its main themes as well as the foundational philosophy that frames its research questions and theoretical and methodological approaches.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social science, especially those in the fields of economics, political sciences, sociology and public administration.

"...the book is a very valuable contribution to understanding the foundations of an important school in institutional economics and highly recommended to students who are already rather familiar with the world of institutions and interested in more fundamental issues concerning modelling actors in relation to the structures surrounding them."